


sub voce

by Elendraug



Series: supernatural poetry [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel Deserves Better (Supernatural), Castiel forever, Episode: s15e18 Despair, Episode: s15e18 Despair - Castiel's Confession Scene, Fix-It of Sorts, Free Verse, Free Will Verse Poetry, Gen, Poetry, Team Free Will (Supernatural), Team Free Will 2.0 (Supernatural), insofar as accountability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27461287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elendraug/pseuds/Elendraug
Summary: until someone loves you I’ll keep you safe, but like them I will give you away.
Relationships: Balthazar & Castiel (Supernatural), Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel & Jack Kline, Castiel & Jack Kline & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Castiel & Jack Kline & Sam Winchester, Castiel & Sam Winchester
Series: supernatural poetry [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2008129
Comments: 12
Kudos: 17





	sub voce

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kaiyote](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaiyote/gifts), [Cuda (Scylla)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scylla/gifts).



> ♫ [the hush sound - that’s okay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bibKaYWMfiE)
> 
> last year I saw someone on tumblr who'd made a gifset/art/something set to this song but I have not been able to find it since, I just wanted to give credit where it was due that someone else noticed these lyrics are perfect
> 
> transcript from [here](https://tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/viewtopic.php?t=39526)
> 
> I don’t think sera gamble intended for season 6 to make me love cas, but it’s way too late now, no backsies
> 
> kai: thank you for everything.
> 
> jazz: you too, and thank you for the beta
> 
> homestuck pesterlogs prepared me for formatting this
> 
> ME: I wrote 500-700 words of prose-poetry I am stuffing between the lines here, like a stuffed crust pizza made of salt.  
> MY PARTNER: (laughs) Also known as a stuffed crust pizza.

* * *

> _So, that's everything. I believe it's what you would call a tragedy from the human perspective. But maybe the human perspective is limited. I don't know. That's why I'm asking you, Father. One last time. Am I doing the right thing? Am I on the right path? You have to tell me. You have to give me a sign. Because if you don't, I'm gonna do whatever I... whatever I must._  
>  [6.20 The Man Who Would Be King]

* * *

> _Despair naturally destroys courage and stops all effort, but may produce a new kind of courage and fierce activity founded upon the sense that there is nothing worse to be feared. In this despair is akin to desperation, which is an active state and always tends to produce a furious struggle against adverse circumstances, even when the situation is utterly hopeless._  
>  [Century Dictionary, 1897]

* * *

DEAN  
Did it work?

dean,

CASTIEL  
It blocked her grip on you.

the righteous man, barred from redemption

POUNDS ON DOOR

CASTIEL  
Dean, she said that wound was killing her.

we have all been drawn down into you, inescapably impacted by the pull, the gravitational force of will nothing can escape, not even wavelengths of celestial intent, started with shattered bulb-sparks and bearing far too much momentum to stop, set ablaze ahead of your own funeral pyre, ashes to cosmic dust, cheating your own death, flaunting rules made but only for everyone else, forever lazarus and losing pieces of yourself when god has grown tired of holding you

POUNDING CONTINUES

CASTIEL  
Maybe we can wait her out.

my son stolen from me and himself, left alive to serve you, permitted to survive only for your use, in hock for straying too far into your spotlight, for the audacity of his existence, in hoc

DEAN  
Yeah, and if we can't?

CASTIEL  
Then we fight.

you and i, we always do

POUNDING CONTINUES

DEAN  
We'll lose. I just led us into another trap. All because I—I couldn't hurt Chuck. Because I was angry and because I just needed something to kill and because that's all I know how to do.

everything i was, hollowed out, recast into plastic to toy with, dabb’s divine plaything, shuffled off this mortal shelf of collectible corpses, angelic blade inert unless wielded only to damage myself

CASTIEL  
Dean.

DEAN  
It was Chuck all along.

in a manner of speaking, himself built in effigy to be sent up, writing is hard but ratings are harder still, and firsthand you’ve seen their mistakes

POUNDING CONTINUES

you can’t bear to be anyone other than the almighty arbiter of existence, no deference to god or man, not death, not anything, unable to stop until you are crowned king of this atrophied hill, all of it blown apart and strip mined to bedrock, to stand atop all that remains

DEAN  
We never should've left Sam and Jack. We should be there with them now.

in time they will all be brought to you as offerings laid at your grave, else entombed alongside you, part of all you would trade for petty revenge, weighing the world against your whims

DEAN  
Everybody's gonna die, Cass, everybody. I can't stop it.

DOOR POUNDS

the same old song, emitted from struggling speakers where you resist all modifications, all change, turning over the last time you remembered a memory until they’re worn coins, still gambling, still bargaining with a way to avert this conclusion, an animal snared in a cage of your own construction, unable to accept, incapable of letting go, you just cannot help yourself

DEAN  
She's gonna get through that door.

CASTIEL  
I know.

DEAN  
And she's gonna kill you, and then she's gonna kill me.

jump this shark, scapegoated for violence, itself a fish once evolving but now stunted, suspended animation in service to these abject accolades after the oceans of blood you’ve spilled, always happy to bleed for you, scarified and stained upon entrance and departure, a cosmological exit wound of a shotgun shell with battered seraphim wings, at your convenience left waiting, set ablaze in holy fire or drowned beneath uncharitable ink and ichor

DOOR POUNDS

DEAN  
I'm sorry.

the great thing about apologies is you don’t have to mean them

CASTIEL  
Wait, there is—There's one thing she's afraid of. There's—There's one thing strong enough to stop her. When Jack was dying, I—I made a deal to save him.

praeses magna

DEAN  
You what?

against better judgment your greatest defender, dug deep from your pockets, cashed out to be cast into the void, a sunken place of spent grace, no depths to which you won’t sink, my own sacrifice mortgaged again and away from its meaning, away from my child, this infinite debt you expect repaid, in your jurisdiction he isn’t human and isn’t family, an executable offense, nothing’s ever good enough for you

CASTIEL  
The—The price was my life. When I experienced a moment of true happiness, the Empty would be summoned and it would take me forever.

DEAN  
Why are you telling me this now?

you must be thinking of some other angel, a great and honorable soldier, because i do care, too kind and too curtailed to cut you off, and all i have ever earned is loss

CASTIEL  
I always wondered, ever since I took that burden, that curse, I wondered what it could be, what... what my true happiness could even look like. I never found an answer. Because the one thing I want—it's something I know I can't have.

jack has never been a burden nor curse, here not for gratitude or absolution but for nourishment and my own heartbreak, but if i am to be dragged away from him, fonder in absentia, oblivion the only catharsis on offer to me as i am cleared out, my own obstacle removed from intruding upon your walled garden of early seasons, permanence a luxury i would never be permitted, autonomy would never be afforded, not after this long as a set piece, my only option available to make peace with a narrative undertow to sweep away the last seraph standing between you and whatever you think you deserve

DOOR POUNDS

free will the one thing i can never have, not while i exist here between these lines, sidelined to the margins, sublimated in eternal service to you, as foolishly we thought we had a choice

CASTIEL  
But I think I know... I think I know now. Happiness isn't in the having. It's in just being. It's in just saying it.

sine vox

DEAN  
What are you talking about, man?

CASTIEL  
I know. I know how you see yourself, Dean. You see yourself the same way our enemies see you. You're destructive and you're angry and you're broken. You're—You're "Daddy's Blunt Instrument." And you think hate and anger, that's—that's what drives you. That's who you are.

aren’t you?

DOOR POUNDS

CASTIEL  
It's not. And everyone who knows you sees it. Everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love. You raised your little brother for love. You fought for this whole world for love. That is who you are.

exonerated no matter the expense, stumped as i am with nothing left to give, deplenished for the last time under your purview, felled by a thousand cuts from the scythe you once wished not to wield, before consumptive arrogance claimed you

DOOR POUNDS

CASTIEL  
You're the most caring man on Earth. You are the most selfless, loving human being I will ever know.

silenced by scripting or silver tape, a mouthpiece for praise, unintelligible utterances to justify what you’ve done, out of bounds and without boundaries, limitless in the lengths to which you may go with assured adulation

DOOR POUNDS

knowing you has brought me to this point and ruined me, heavy as i hold heaven’s grief now that i am all that’s left of the host, earthbound, my anger anesthetized without acknowledgement, lanced with these last words, dancing on pins and needles

CASTIEL  
You know, ever since we met and ever since I pulled you out of Hell, knowing you has changed me. Because you cared, I cared. I cared about you. I cared about Sam. I cared about Jack. I cared about the whole world because of you.

big plans for that fish. don’t step on it

DOOR POUNDS

is it ever going to be enough?

CASTIEL  
You changed me, Dean.

from what i was, from who i am, from what i wanted to be

DEAN  
Why does this sound like a goodbye?

snipped loose from the last threads of this scripted fate, keystrokes falling only to delete, edit and omit from the final cut, slated since season six

DOOR POUNDS

this goodbye on behalf of everyone, a surrogate, stand-in, phantom farewell, with no other choice, as usual

CASTIEL  
Because it is. I love you.

and i am Empty

DEAN  
Don't do this, Cass.

DOOR POUNDS

DEAN  
Cass.

CASTIEL  
Goodbye, Dean.

stained, but not the way you have laid hands upon us

DEAN  
What?

CELLPHONE VIBRATING

now it’s just you and these two, people i love and can do no more for, forestalled by authorial fiat, even as you ignore their calls for help

THUNK

no one can judge you but god, made truly in his own image, a chip off the old writer’s block

VIBRATING CONTINUES

i am scared not to exist

SOBS

aren’t you?

**Author's Note:**

> Cas, I love you and I'm so fucking sorry


End file.
